19 September [1921]

Dear Comrade!

I request that you reply to me whether anyone (contrary to my insistence) will interpret the letter as a complaint. Is the work proceeding in a fully comradely manner?

Lenin.

1 The postscript was written by hand by one of the office workers at the end of the following letter from the Council of People's Commissars Management Office to the Astrakhan Executive Committee: "By comrade Lenin's instruction I am sending you a copy of my letter No. 12711 of 19 September of this year, addressed to the Krasnoyarsk Provincial Economic Soviet, and I urgently call your attention to the fact that the Provincial Economic Soviet was not 'complaining,' but was fulfilling its civic duty, writing a report to the Council of Labor and Defense: it would be absurd and criminal to regard this from the standpoint of a 'complaint.' One must achieve, through joint work, harmonious improvement in all spheres, even if only gradually."

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# STRUGGLE AGAINST RED TAPE

Deputy People's Commissar of Justice, Comrade Krasiков.

30 September 1921

On 5 September I sent under No. 809 a note to Comrade Kursky,¹ his deputy, and all members of the collegium, in which I charged them with the obligation to

* Printed from a typewritten copy; the signature and postscript were written by Lenin. [Ed.]